At least two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts agree that the rul­ing in favour of David Lee in his mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge, is a boost for him and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign in­ten­si­fies.

Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles yes­ter­day dis­missed the charges of con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice against Lee, af­ter up­hold­ing a no-case sub­mis­sion pre­sent­ed by his le­gal team, led by Wayne Sturge and Mario Mer­ritt of Regius Cham­bers.

Mag­is­trate Charles ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charges or pro­ceed to tri­al.

Re­act­ing to the de­vel­op­ment, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the rul­ing was a wel­come one for Lee dur­ing the cam­paign.

“No­body wants to have any kind of mat­ter hang­ing over their head, so that’s a po­lit­i­cal boost for him ... It’s a win. I see it as a win for the UNC. It’s a win for David Lee in some ways. It’s a po­lit­i­cal bol­ster for both the UNC and David Lee,” he said.

On whether the rul­ing might af­fect the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s cam­paign strat­e­gy, Dr Mo­hammed said he does not be­lieve it will force a change in their mes­sag­ing or their ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion against UNC mem­bers.

“They’re not go­ing to change any­thing ... They’re go­ing to be un­apolo­getic. We are in a po­lit­i­cal war, so to speak, and they’re go­ing to do any­thing to spin the sto­ry. They’ll say the case was dropped on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty—doesn’t mean he’s in­no­cent,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­dera Sage­wan shared a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive.

“I’m sure he can now move for­ward with his po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing with­out this hang­ing over his head, and he can use this on the cam­paign trail to dis­miss the PNM’s at­tacks,” Sage­wan said.

Dr Sage­wan al­so ex­pressed the view that the rul­ing has put the UNC in a stronger po­si­tion when ad­dress­ing the pub­lic.

She, too, does not be­lieve it will change the way the PNM con­tin­ues with its cam­paign.

“I cer­tain­ly think they will con­tin­ue along sim­i­lar lines with re­spect to oth­er UNC mem­bers they be­lieve have ques­tion­able is­sues sur­round­ing them. I ex­pect them to dig their feet in even deep­er on those in­di­vid­u­als,” she said.